The ABT and similar gangs allegedly operate criminal
enterprises involving meth trafficking and murdereven though
many of their members are behind bars.

To do so, gang members send coded messages to each other through
girlfriends on the outside, former Texas prison warden Terry
Pelz tells us. Prison gangsters also rely on the very
people guarding them to facilitate their criminal
activities, according to Pelz, who's now a "prison
environment" expert and consultant.

Prison guards have been known to accept bribes in
exchange for bringing in contraband like cellphones or
drugs. Since guards listen in on prisoners' official
phone calls, a cellphone can be highly useful contraband.

Even though this contraband can play a huge role in making prison
gangs' illegal activities possible, Pelz says, corrections
officers sometimes just get fired and not criminally prosecuted
if they get caught.

One of the former corrections officers, 38-year-old Jaime Jorge
Garza, pleaded guilty after getting caught at a checkpoint with
four cellphones, pot, and tobacco, the
Corpus Christi Caller-Times reported earlier this month. In
court, Garza said he got pushed around a lot when he was a
corrections officer.

“When I got caught at the checkpoint I was
relieved," he said, according to the Caller-Times.
"I was glad it was over.”

Not only is it tempting for low-paid guards to accept bribes in
the first place, but it's hard for them to stop doing so because
prison gang members might threaten them, says Pelz, who was a
warden in an Angleton,
Texas prison in the 1980s when the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas
started to proliferate.

"Our standards aren't very high for hiring officers," Pelz says.
"These youngsters come to work for the penitentiary and
the convicts eat them alive."